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Islam and Historical Criticism

If one is not a pluralist he/she may be inclined to compare/contrast religions and evaluate them. A pluralist might ask "why?" while others ask, "by what criteria?" Of course, there are various approaches each with there respective standards, one of which is known as the ethical approach.

The ethical approach is a common and quite justified approach that focuses on the character of Muhammad and the effects Islam has had throughout history, which we see so clearly in many Muslim nations today. If Muhammad were really the prophet of God, and Islam the true religion, then Muhammad’s life should reflect this and Islam should have a just, ethical system that promotes human flourishing.

A Reasonable Criteria

I believe in divine revelation, but I do not accept every sacred book that claims to be such, mainly because they are rationally exclusive. But I don’t just dismiss them out-of-hand, blindly, I reject them for specific reasons. Even though they claim to be divine revelation, I put them all through the same grid of reason which is necessary to identify something as revelation.

Has the Bible Been Corrupted Over Time?

Muslims believe that the Bible has been corrupted and redacted by later editors. This claim is an old one and many scholars who have held this view have had to fall on their swords in the past. The fact is that modern scholarship can objectively demonstrate that:

We can be confident that the Greek New Testament has not changed from what was penned by the original authors.

We can be assured that the contemporaries of the original authors received the plurality of the New Testament as the inspired word of God.

History demonstrates that the earliest Christians held to exactly 4 gospels that we can identify as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The process of canonization and the recognition of which books were inspired occurred extremely early.

What Every Muslim Needs to Know About How We Got the New Testament (Injeel), part 4

The internal evidence of the NT shows an immediate expectation and acceptance of the writings of the apostles. From the Church Fathers, we can see that the sub-corpus of the 4 gospels and the book of Acts were accepted extremely early and exclusively. The letters of Paul were copied, transmitted, and read across the entire population of Christians including his personal letters and the sub-corpus of Paul’s 13 letters were assembled together. Even heretical and gnostic writings confirm the early existence of the gospels in that it is the gospels that they mimic and never the other way around.